How to write a best literature review for your dissertation with a proper research gap

Description: A literature review plays a very important role in your dissertation. Therefore, you need to draft your literature review carefully. However, most of the students often just write the summary without identifying the research gaps. If you are among them, this article will help you write the best literature review for your dissertation with a proper research gap.

A literature review is an essential element of any academic work such as dissertation and dissertation research proposal. Often misunderstood as a summary, it is more than that. It not only summarizes the literature but also presents the current state of knowledge, future study and gaps in the literature. Most of the times, the students tend to write only the summary and ignore the second part. Therefore, through this article, you will know how to analyze write the best literature review with proper gap.

Purpose of a literature review

·         To ensure that the research is not replicated

·         To highlight the key findings

·         To identify the clues for future research

·         To gain a constructive analysis regarding the approach and methodologies

·         To start your research with a bang

Identifying Research Gaps

While working on the literature review for your dissertation research proposal you need to identify the appropriate research gaps for an impactful research and demonstrate your expertise in the topic. But, identifying the gaps is not an easy task. All the students have the same question when it comes to research gaps, “How do I write my dissertation by identifying the research gaps in my literature review?”

What if you learnt that you can identify the research gaps for your literature review dissertation in just three steps? Wouldn’t that be great?

Step 1: Focus on your area of research

Before attempting to identify the gaps, you need to focus on your area of research for your dissertation proposal. Once you identify the area of research, you need to develop your knowledge on that topic. To identify a suitable topic for your research you need to perform exploratory research, read eBooks and get help from your faculty and advisors.

Step 2: Read a Lot

The second step will be the most time-consuming. In this step, you will have to read as many articles as possible. You need to identify many resources from various sources such as online databases, journals, libraries and much more. Once you identify the resources, you need to pay close attention to the introduction, abstract, and future suggestion of the article. However, while reading all the resources possible, ensure that you do not get deviated due to other issues.

Step 3: Map your Literature

While you are reading all the articles, you need to keep a track of all of them. Also, you need to simultaneously note down the questions that pop up in your head while reading them. Doing so will allow you to frame your thesis clearly. Research for all the questions that you have noted down and ensure if there are answers available to them.  

In case, you do not find the answer to any of the question, then you have found out the research gap.

Writing Literature review

1.      Refer Sample Literature Review

Before starting with the literature review for your dissertationproposal, refer to a sample literature review in your subject area and learn how the literature is written. Familiarize yourself with the existing discussions and debates. Doing so will provide a huge impact on your research.

2.      Keep it Simple

You need to ensure that your topic is narrow and you focus on it rather than deviating to a broad scale. Your tutor will not expect you to research and address all the arguments related to your topic. You will have to focus only on the arguments that relate to your hypothesis.

3.      Make use of Current Resources

A very important part of your literature review is that you make use of the most recent literature. The reason is that the discussions in the old literature might be outdated. Especially in the field such as medicine, the latest resource is always best. Sometimes there might be the need to refer old classic resources. However, you will still have to link those resources to the current approaches.

4.      Organize Your Work

Organizing your literature review is very to link one literature to the other. You can organize in various methods such as based on theme or based on chronology. Before starting, ensure think about the structure in your mind to help you work better.

Now that you know how to write the best literature review dissertation, you should not find any issue identifying the research gaps. However, you find it difficult to write your literature review and wonder, “can someone write my dissertation,” you can get help from Uniresearchers.